Yael Massen

Group Therapy

This man licked my cheek
This man kept my hand when I passed him tomatoes
This man slapped my hand away
This man pushed up my shirt when I said not now
This man took the back of my neck and
This man said you are beautiful so beautiful
This man was at the party today so I fled
This man stood across the street from my house
This man said get in the car
This man bought me a sandwich after and
This man called my parents
This man called me bitch
This man called me high
This man pushed against me in the break room
This man pushed against me in science class
This man pushed against me behind the shed
This man pushed the beer can into my mouth
This man drove me to the beach with the sunroof open
This man bit me
This man asked why I’m laughing
This man catches a football
This man is a reporter
This man writes report cards and
This man pushed into my mouth when I was asleep
This man snores and snores
This man likes chocolate ice cream
This man likes fly fishing
This man likes violins
This man likes all things gold-plated
This man put it in my drink when I went to the bathroom
This man wouldn’t get off of me when he finished
This man finished last in his track meet and
This man is my best friend
This man brought his friend
This man left to throw up and came back and
This man threw his phone at my face
This man never told anyone it happened to him too
This man washed his sheets right after
This man wished me happy birthday yesterday and
This man tied him up for three days
This man will be someone’s doctor someday
This man got a promotion today and
This man might be in town today and
This man said sorry when he ripped my favorite shirt
This man really liked to slap me
This man tasted like dish soap
This man looks like me
This man likes to share pictures of it with his friends
This man said I was too cute to like women
This man knows where my sister lives and
This man has great lawyers
This man is a lawyer and
This man says women do it too
This man has great arms
This man is my grandfather
This man will still graduate
This man said his friend died in the war
This man just died last week
This man is dating my mom again and
This man spooned me all night
This man takes his coffee with two spoons of sugar
This man woke me up with his hand inside of me
This man has a tattoo of a snake that watched me as he did it
This man says we made a mistake together and
This man would do it again if he could

Yael Massen is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Indiana University and former Nonfiction Editor and Associate Poetry Editor of Indiana Review. Her poems can be found within the pages and URLs of DIAGRAM, Hobart, Mid-American Review, Lilith, Southern Indiana Review, Ninth Letter Online, and Day One. She is a recipient of the 2016 Vera Meyer Strube Academy of American Poets Award, the 2016 Kraft-Kinsey Award from the Kinsey Institute, and was a 2015 TENT Fellow in Creative Writing at the Yiddish Book Center. She volunteers as an On-Scene Advocate and a Legal Advocate at Middle Way House, a domestic violence shelter in Bloomington, Indiana, where she lives, works, and walks.